4 Why is the Local Economy Important?

As a community development worker for over 30 years, I have seen many community audits. Very few even mention the local economy; it seems to be a blind spot in the world of community development. Why is this? How can we bring about lasting change for the better without developing the local economy? The alternative is dependence on grants or mainstream funding; with the recession these are less of an industry than they used to be. Grants and mainstream funding are dependent on decisions made by people who live and work outside of the applicant community. The big advantage of the local economy is it is something to which local people contribute; they do not need permission.

I have written several posts about the marketplace. The upshot is we’ve  allowed the neo-liberal right to hijack this word to favour the activities of the big corporations; they’re the opposite of the market because they undermine it. They

In summary the marketplace has little to do with profit and everything to do with community. When people can meet and freely interact they will naturally make deals and develop new ideas. The omni-corporate extraction of decision-making from the local and its relocation to the global means the interactions that generate genuine innovation are less likely to happen.  Views tend to polarise and competing ideologies are a poor basis for building trusting relationships.

Large scale activities are always better done by the statutory sector who have (or had) the infrastructure to employ people on reasonable wages. The argument that the private sector is more economic depends on lower wages. This reduces money circulating in neighbourhoods. The current recession was caused by this neo-liberal approach.

The other part is the role of banks. We need to understand how the banks create money. Every time they make a loan, they create money. Once upon a time you needed money to make a loan. It seems obvious. If I loan you £100 in bank notes, I must have £100 in bank notes to start with. However, if I credit £100 to your bank account a I don’t have to actually have that £100. So, you can calculate the percentage of money loaned covered by reserves.

If I am trading, I am helping  money circulate in the local economy. The corporate economy creates money through loans to corporations that tend to concentrate money in fewer hands and takes it out of local economies. First, banks make loans to bigger corporations because they trust them. Second, repayments return to the bank, translating newly created money into real money.

This fractional reserve banking practically extracts money from the local economy and concentrates it in the hands of banks and large businesses. To legislate to prevent banks loaning more than they have (or at least to restrict it) would be a good first step. But banking also needs to be deployed to support small businesses and not the corporations.

2 Needs Assessments and Audits

About 8 years ago I worked for the national office of the Methodist Church in the UK.  I was responsible for £1 million per year of grants for Methodist Churches and one of the issues was encouraging applicants to plan their work and think critically about their plans.  We designed our grant application forms to encourage applicants to tell their story and show they could deliver their objectives.  Needs assessments like this are common in grant applications.

So in 2006 we published a CD-Rom (remember those?) called “Building Confidence”.  These days it would be on a website and we did consider that as an option but decided that at the time many member churches did not have access to broadband.

The CD-Rom included a document called “The Hard Questions Workbook”.  The idea was you would attempt to answer its questions after you had designed your project.  It aimed to encourage project managers to take a step back and look critically at their plans before they applied for a grant.  I would have preferred to publish it on cheap paper like the old children’s dot-to-dot books.  Then a small group could have sat around and scribbled their ideas on it.  We were very excited by it in the office but I don’t remember anyone ever claiming to have used it!

Needs Assessment Questionnaires

Earlier this week I heard a story from an experienced web consultant who had struggled getting his clients to complete questionnaires for needs assessments or audits.  The questions switched them off and he was losing friends as a result!  This conversation was in the context of a massive new questionnaire a group of us are working on to help organisations design their websites for conversion.  This, supported by a team of consultants, will be a powerful tool if we can persuade clients to use it!

I too have a needs assessment questionnaire and have found it switches off my clients.  By off I mean really totally and completely off.  I mean so far off that I have not been able to gather any helpful information about what the problem actually is.  It seems people do not like being asked about their organisations.  They do not like having to think carefully about what they are doing.  Whilst I have no doubt at all this accounts for why so many websites and real life projects are a bit rubbish, I am at a loss to explain why there is such adamant resistance.

I love going deep into organisations and don’t find deep analysis at all threatening.  Experienced consultants can charge thousands of pounds because there are plenty of big businesses who understand the value of it.

Reasons Third Sector Organisations Reject Needs Assessments

They

These are all guesses.  Maybe some apply in some cases and maybe there are other reasons I have not picked up.  What’s to be done?  What we have is a product few people want and many organisations need.  I think there are three things needed to help organisations take up this approach.  We need to

Have you encountered similar problems?  If so leave a comment.  Thanks!

0 Categories in Navigation

Last Thursday I wrote about how to create new categories. One of their most powerful features is they can be added to your WordPress site navigation. If you click on a category name in the navigation it will take you to a page with all the posts within that category, starting with the latest.

In wp-admin hover over Appearance in the left hand menu and click on Menus. Towards the top of this page you will see the words Menu Name in italic. The name beside this heading identifies the menu you are working on. If your site has one menu, you don’t need to worry about this. With more than one, you need to check you’re working on the right menu.

If not, click on the Manage Locations tab at the top of the page and select the correct menu. I’m assuming you have set up your  menus; at some stage I shall look at how to set up menus in more detail.

So back to Edit Menus using the tab. Now you need to look at the left hand side of the page. Depending on your plug-ins there will be several options. Select Categories and the arrow alongside it.

This opens with the categories you are using most. If you can see the category you want to add to your menu, select it. If not use the View All tab to open up all your categories.

Once you have selected one or more categories, click on Add to Menu.

WordPress will add your new category to the bottom of the list on the right. You can then drag it to the place where you want it. If the left hand edge of its box is as far to the left as it will go it will appear on your menu. The category at the top will be at the top of a vertical menu, or furthest to the left, and the later ones will follow on.

If you indent your category it will appear in a submenu of the category immediately above further to the left. I don’t think there’s a limit to the degrees of subcategory although three is probably the limit for most practical purposes.

Your theme will decide exactly how your navigation appears and so, once you’ve pressed Save Menu at the foot of the page, it is a good idea to refresh your site and look at exactly what you’ve done. If you haven’t got it right, simply go back and try again. This way you can work out the best configuration.

This approach to menus is at its best if you are using a Noticeboard approach to blogging. You may find with a long diary or large library you need to use additional navigational aids to help your visitors navigate your site (follow the link for the meaning of these terms). The fact that blogs list backwards from the latest post can be a problem when reading a post sequence.

1 Is Your Organisation the Web Designer’s Job?

It can be difficult to explain the web consultancy role to clients. The client wants a website and may not have a clear image of what their website will be for; its purpose or what they can do with it.  If they want to market a product, service or cause, they need to consider how their organisation will use their site and this will have implications for the organisation.  This is the first of the five main reasons organisations lose their sense of purpose.

When their website consultant starts to ask questions about their clients’ aims and objectives and other details of their organisation, they are sometimes seen as stepping outside their role.  So, it is important to be clear from the start, why it is important to ask these questions.  Many clients do not appreciate the central role a website can play in the life of their organisation.  It doesn’t have to play such a role.  Organisations that are not in business may not have a marketing mindset and strongly hold to the view that their website has no implications for their overall practice.  Some businesses may share the same mistaken beliefs.

Some of this can be accounted for by not understanding what websites can do for organisations.  Many people’s beliefs are simply out of date although they can be strongly held.  Others have a stake in their organisation that overrides the new website.  The costs of a website that doesn’t work for them, that is a liability, may not be as great as the perceived loss of power to the people who run the website.

Many organisations see appointing a consultant or a designer as analogous to appointing Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It does not change the chapel’s function. The life and routine of the Vatican are not affected by the artwork in the chapel.  Of course that is not strictly true.  The Sistine Chapel is a tourist attraction because of the ceiling and so does affect the life of the Vatican.  If this is what the client wants, then they don’t need a consultant.  They’re looking for an old-school website designer.  Their website is a badge and they can be blissfully unaware of the costs in time and money such a site will have for them.  There are many such sites and perhaps some organisations are happy with them.  They might still be happy if they were aware of what the site could do for them.

It is acceptable to have a brochure type site if it is used as a paper brochure would be used, simply to display the organisation’s credentials.  Potential clients, partners or customers can be directed there for more information.  What is not acceptable is to charge the client for a site built on an obscure platform, with limited potential functionality.  Organisations change and can find they have to scrap the old site entirely to bring in new functionality when they do decide they need more from their site.  Bad decisions are not so serious when they can be easily remedied.

The consultant’s role is perhaps more analogous to an architect. Asked to design a chapel, the architect will need a lot of information from the client to find a design that meets their requirements. The architect will ask a lot of questions the client might not expect. That is the role of any consultant, to ask the questions the client has not anticipated, to make connections the client has not made. The more the client can take part in planning the website, the better the finished website will be. A good architect may be an artist but unlike Michelangelo cannot work without a strong relationship with the client.

I’ve already pointed you to my previous sequence about non-directive consultancy.  Consultancy is usually understood to be about bringing in someone with knowledge and skills absent within the organisation.  Non-directive consultancy understands the consultor or client has more knowledge than the consultant.  Whilst I think non-directive consultancy is most appropriate for website consultancy the reality is more complex.  The consultor has unique knowledge about their organisation and business but the consultant also brings in knowledge absent within the organisation.  The skills they bring are as much about online marketing as they are about website design.  Indeed many claim the consultant needs no technical knowledge to build a website that works for the organisation.  Nevertheless consultant and consultor both bring unique knowledge to the table.

Developing your website implies changing the ways you do things. A simple example is newsletters. They are often a benefit offered to members of third sector organisations. Many organisations send their newsletters by email. The reasons for this are usually cost related.

However, if they set up a website and want to seek new members through it, a common approach is to enable visitors to subscribe using an email list. This keeps them in touch with the website and over a period they can be encouraged to become a member.

This is a big advantage, especially for local groups who can promote their cause and recruit members this way. The question is what they offer to subscribers. The newsletter is an obvious answer. It is a reason to be in regular contact with subscribers and if it is worth reading, may be exactly what they might sign up for.

But then the knock-on question is, what do you offer members? If subscribers get the newsletter, what is the advantage of becoming a member? The organisation may depend upon the members dues for its income.

There isn’t a single solution to this problem. Some organisations will be able to offer something beyond the newsletter to members, whilst others will find some other incentive for subscribers. Whatever they decide, they need to review their membership arrangements.

If you enjoyed this post, you can sign up to my email list at the top of the right-hand column. You will receive a weekly summary of my posts, an email sequence about community development and occasional emails about community development online.

1 Content Marketing

In content marketing, it is claimed, “content is king”. I’m not sure about the monarchical turn of phrase but that’s what they say.  It is still news to many website owners who believe the technical challenges of design and site maintenance are more important.  This means they often undervalue the content on their site.  Content has to be the site owner’s first responsibility as it is likely their designer will have no idea what the owner hopes to achieve through their site.  Of course the designer should discuss this with the owner but many are “techies” and have no idea.  There are many wrong ways to approach content.

Is content really the most important thing? Well, yes although it does depend on which content you mean. If you have followed this sequence, you may remember the product launch sequence must include high quality content. This means content of real value. The reader or video watcher should be able to do something useful with the content and not find they are missing vital information. This is marketing based upon generosity. The idea is people are more likely to buy if they are grateful for the free content.  And this works if what they buy is of equal or greater value.  Perhaps it is easier to produce great value than it ever has been but it still requires hard work.

Conversion depends upon good content. If people arrive at your site and find it is full of high quality information, they are more likely to buy your products. This seems to apply just as much to information products as it does to products that arrive by post.  So, someone who sells jewellery might blog about how they make it, the origins of the materials they use, the history of particular pieces, etc.  Readers might buy out of gratitude for the stories and information they read.  They can be encouraged to subscribe and so be invited to return to the site when you post something that interests them.

So, what benefits are there in providing high quality content?  Well

The aim of all of this activity is to build a tribe. That’s the usual term used although I would prefer community. Tribe to me implies conversations between a chief and various members of the tribe. Community implies a space where people can share with one another.  These are the people who will help you design your online content, market it and purchase it.

One interesting emerging thought is much content marketing lacks one essential for building community online. The technical stuff is all in place but it seems one thing is lacking. Any ideas? Let me know what you think it may be. I’ll tell you next Tuesday.

If you enjoyed this post, you can sign up to my email list at the top of the right-hand column. You will receive a weekly summary of my posts, an email sequence about community development and occasional emails about community development online.

0 So, What is the Local Economy?

What is the local economy?  It is easier to say what the local economy is not!

The local economy is where traders, small businesses and self-employed have a personal stake in the economy. They have their own businesses and solidarity with others who are active in the same neighbourhood.  By neighbourhood I mean a part of a city or possibly a city or region.  It varies depending upon the nature of the business.  Trading outside the neighbourhood is crucial for many businesses, the key to the local economy is solidarity and this takes many forms, not all financial.

Local Scenarios

The degree to which businesses practice solidarity is important. So, let’s imagine a few scenarios:

• An estate or small town built to accommodate a major business. In the past these were coal mines, steel works or other large companies, the relationship between ICI and Billingham springs to mind. The economy depends upon the survival of one key industry. Everything else in the neighbourhood will be to some degree dependent upon it. There will be shops whilst people have money to shop in them. This model fails when the main industry disappears, there is not enough money circulating to keep other businesses going and the entire economy collapses.
• So, the second model is the estate or small town there the economy has collapsed. It seems difficult to re-start a collapsed economy.
• A more stable model is where there are several large businesses so the economy is not dependent on the survival of one. This perhaps describes most of our major cities. They may be dependent on one type of industry but not on one company. Sheffield for example is still known as the Steel City. It still has several significant steel mills even though the numbers have fallen and so have the numbers employed by the remaining businesses.
• The city allows pockets of local economies to grow within it. So, Hunters Bar and Spital Hill are possible because they are a part of a larger economic entity, where a neighbourhood has a critical mass of small traders and self-employed working behind the scenes. Traders need footfall and so it’s difficult to open a shop where there are no others unless there is some reason people will pass your door. So, the most successful small trader areas will be either city centres or places where people visit, to view some attraction. Such attractions draw visitors and so attract other self-employed or small businesses. Where there is sufficient footfall, a number of businesses and other attractions accumulate, and we have a local marketplace.

Conclusion

To summarise, every neighbourhood has a local economy. The degree to which it is a satellite economy to some large-scale enterprise, a strong or robust coalition of small businesses or an economic wasteland depends on local circumstances.

The problem for many neighbourhoods is the local economy is invisible. Community development usually focuses upon the needs of disadvantaged people; so the focus is on children and young people, or the elderly or unemployed. Business people have other priorities and so are less inclined to engage in community activities. And yet arguably they are the people who build community through the local marketplace.

0 My Origin Story

Two Fridays ago I shared a simple story from my past and last week I wrote about digital storytelling.  Today I’m going to share my origin story; the story that explains why I have set up my community web consultancy.  This story is a work in progress and I shall re-write it many times.  Stories are fluid, there is no final version.  This one still needs more work!

At the time of publishing there is an earlier version on the About page on this site.  I expect to take it down once I’ve re-written my origin story to my satisfaction.

One late afternoon in 1996 Attercliffe in Sheffield UK, my friends took me to Pizza Hut, and not leave me in the office on my own. We had a meeting coming up that evening and I was shaking. I’ve never felt that way before or since. My hands were visibly involuntarily moving.

It was stress and it led to my first diagnosis of high blood pressure, for which I still take medication. Looking back I wonder whether anything is worth that sort of stress.  But what brought it on?

Well, we had over 3 – 4 years set up a Trust, Attercliffe and Darnall Community Enterprises, and the idea was that it would be the successor to the Lower Don Valley Forum. The Forum covered several neighbourhoods but it was a small group of dedicated activists with little local support but with the support of the Local Authority.

With my support (I worked for Industrial Mission in South Yorkshire, a church-linked ecumenical organisation) the Forum had developed several community enterprises and businesses. The Trust was an essential step towards providing support for these projects into the future.  The meeting should have been a simple transfer of assets from the Forum to the Trust.

However, the closing of the Forum was a step too far for the activists and in the weeks leading to its AGM their opposition came into the open. I had made a lot of mistakes. I’m not always sensitive to peoples’ feelings and had underestimated their strength of feeling.

My friends did what they could to calm me with pizza and then we went to the meeting. What was at stake? Everything legally belonged to the Forum but it was not a company and lacked the democratic structures for it ever to be properly accountable. They had recently won significant grants but they were for the Trust and depended  upon the transfer of assets.

There were a lot of problems with several projects in the area; all of them were struggling with accountability. I wanted to show it was possible for local people to run an organisation to professional standards. The reality though was this meant the old Forum members would lose power. There were others who wanted to be involved and were delighted the Forum had been successful in its grant applications. They supported the change but were there enough of them?

It wasn’t fair because the Forum’s rules allowed anyone living in the Valley to vote at AGMs. This was one reason it wasn’t suitable to go forward. It is the reason why the old members lost the vote when the doors opened and about 60 people marched in.  I hadn’t expected these numbers and they were all members of the Forum under its rules even though they had never been to a meeting.

The Forum’s activists split off and instead of closing kept it going with council support. I lost friends and colleagues I had made over the years. It was a professional victory and a personal defeat for me. Even though the Trust had support from local people it took several years for the Council to concede it was well run and accountable to the community.

This experience set me on a new path. I had seen community economic development as simply about setting up projects. I realised there was more to it and relationships were just as important, maybe more important than funding. Good relationships without funding can achieve a great deal. Funding with poor relationships achieves nothing of lasting value.

Over the years I have seen the same story repeated time and again. Large sums of money thrown at communities that lack the relationship capacity they need to make anything of it.

Why? Because we base so much of our practice on the assumption altruism motivates people to volunteer or become an activist. Self-interest motivates successful groups and is effective in transformational change, not altruism.

Self-interest is honest. I benefit when the people around me benefit. I understand that working for the benefit of others benefits me too. In working for my benefit I benefit others.

In the UK we separate self-interest from community; compare with the nineteenth century, people understood self-interest and achieved an astonishing amount through mutuals. The retail co-operative movement was the most important example of this but mutual principles motivated or influenced almost every institution we use in modern society.

It was a way of harnessing entrepreneurial spirit to local solidarity. People who owned their own businesses believed they were working for their communities. Not only did they create jobs they also endowed the local authority with gifts of buildings and parks.

Today community work happens in community centres. Most people see small businesses as part of the private sector, where people do unspeakable things with money. What I’ve seen is the opposite. Time and again I’ve seen large amounts of public money go to projects that lack accountability and business acumen. They flame and burn out.

Meanwhile small businesses quietly support the local economy. The thing is when you know you can generate income, then the value of money changes. You can be generous because you know how to find more. Grants are time limited and bring instability to our communities.

The future of our communities is with the entrepreneurial spirit and not community groups. This means the future is with entrepreneurs, whether they are small business owners or running social enterprises. These people need to work together both in their local areas and online.

They need to work together locally because together they can get some purchase on the flow of money around the local economy. Wrestling control from the multinationals will never be easy but it is has to be through the local economy.

Online because partnership can happen between areas, sharing stories and ideas, learning how to market online as well as locally. Together we need to face up to the ideas that marginalise community work in the third sector.

Work in Progress

Perhaps the story is too complex to fully grasp.  Explaining the back-story can possibly lose the reader.  Also the end becomes rather theoretical and I need to find perhaps another story to bridge from this one to the present.

Currently an earlier version of this story appears on my site’s About page.  I could move it to a more prominent place on the website.  It could be told in text or by video, which is certainly something I want to explore.  Many people have several versions of their origin story suitable for different situations.  They tell the story at meetings, during training events, in videos …  This story as it stands doesn’t quite trip off the tongue but I’ll keep working on it!

Any feedback about how I might improve would be welcome.

2 Using Categories

The first priority when organising blog posts as you write, is assigning them to categories.  It pays to be systematic from the start. Categories help you keep track of your posts.

If you assign categories before you start, assuming you know what your blog will be about, this will help you keep track of things.  You can assign as many categories as you like to any one post.  You need to be careful if you assign multiple categories.  This is your primary way of organising posts and so you want a system that is easy to grasp, for your readers and for you when you return to it after a period.  Some people allow only one category per post.  I assign one subcategory per post and whilst this includes the parent category, I assign the parent too so that I am reminded about the parent child relationship.

Later, you may find you need to adjust your categories.  You can:

The thing to remember is if you delete a category you do not delete its posts. You will lose a record of which posts were in the deleted category.

So if you open the WordPress dashboard and click on Posts in the left hand column, you will see Categories among the submenu items. So open the Categories page.

To the right you will see a record of your existing categories and their relationships.  To create a new category, work down the left hand side of the page and start by naming your category.

It is best to keep names as short as possible but they should convey what the category is about. One disadvantage of a long name is it will lengthen you post urls and so the next box, Slug, allows you to assign a shorter category name for your urls.

If you click on the arrow beside the word Parent, you can select one of the existing categories to be Parent to your new category. So categories can be nested within other categories, these are sometimes called subcategories. If you want a standalone category, leave this blank.  Posts entered into a subcategory will also appear in the parent category.

You can enter a category description if you wish. This may help if you have a number of blog authors, so they have some idea which categories to use.

To add your new category to the list on the right, click the blue button at the bottom. This table should be self-explanatory. The Parent-Child relationships are shown by blue dashes to the left of the category name. If you hover over the name you will see several options appear.

Quick edit enables you to change the name and the slug. Edit takes you to a new page which enables you to change just about anything.

Your new category name will appear in your post editor so that you can assign new posts to it. Once you have one or more posts in the category it will also feature in lists of categories in the sidebar or footer of your website.

If you want it to appear in your navigation, you will need to set that up; the topic for next time.

2 Knowing Your Purpose

So, now to the main theme of this thread, where I shall look at the issues third sector organisations face. We need to face up to it, not knowing your purpose is likely to be a problem your organisations faces from time to time.  The reasons for this are complex.

Third sector organisations share some issues with businesses and government bodies whilst some are peculiar to third sector organisations.  Many small organisations find their resources restricted and time limited. Without paid staff organisations are dependent upon volunteers. Paid staff means volunteers need to track down finance or manage staff; it can be tough for unemployed people who manage paid staff.

Some people enjoy it because their small organisation becomes their personal purpose. Organisations can take on a life of their own; they take on a reality in the minds of their members, beyond the mundane reality of their resources . To create a website that works for their organisation, they will need to understand how others perceive their practice, as they strive to express it to the outside world.

Why Websites Need a Purpose

Let’s face it sick organisations produce sick websites. No-one can rescue a poor website if the client organisation is sick. A healthy organisation will not want to put up with a poor website for long. Many designers and developers find their clients frustrating. You can see why if you understand the problem may be with the client and not the machine. Woe betide the designer who has no people skills and does not understand organisations.

Here are five issues that lead to organisations losing their sense of purpose.  They don’t:

This is a work in progress for me and I shall expand on each in turn over the coming weeks. If you think I’ve missed something do let me know.

0 Traffic and Conversion

Last time I described product launches, an effective form of online marketing; one of many approaches and an innovative alternative to the old-fashioned long sales letter.  To get anything to work you need to be aware of traffic and conversion.

Not all online marketers run launches. A launch is usually a brief period during which a product is available. It is particularly appropriate where online courses need a number of people to sign up at the same time.  Many businesses have evergreen products, available for purchase at any time. These businesses can be successful; Amazon is an example that springs to mind.

There are two problems your business needs to solve if you are to sell in this way. The first is traffic, where you need to get the right kind of visitors to your site. The right kind of visitor is the person who is likely to want to buy whatever you are selling.  The second task, conversion, encourages visitors to the site to make a purchase.

Traffic

Traffic is usually approached through search engine optimisation (seo), which has its own rather complicated history. (There are other ways to attract people to a site and I’ve written about some of these.) SEO developed as Google’s search engine developed and so Google drives most of it, although there are other search engines. (The next most popular is YouTube’s search engine and seo on YouTube is very different, even though Google owns it.)

Google’s aim is when someone searches for something, they will find the best quality  information on the search engine results page (SERP) and not a load of adverts. This means a lot of what only a year or 2 ago was effective practice now has a more limited application. Google are right about the changes they have made and the literature is full of accounts of white hat and black hat seo.  White hat seo aims to produce content Google aims to give high priority on its search engines, whereas black hat seo tries to game the system.  These days white hat seo is more effective and is largely about content marketing.  I’ll go into this in more detail next Tuesday.

Conversion

It is hard to see how conversion could ever become less important. SEO was always subject to decisions made by Google but conversion depends on your decisions about your site. Conversion is becoming a bigger topic and covers many aspects of online business practice. It is not just the look of the site but also its content.

A lot of what is visible on your site matters. It is important to understand it is not always possible to predict which of two options will be more successful.  The good news is it is possible, using split testing, to compare  two similar pages for performance and so pinpoint on-page characteristics that encourage visitors to respond in the ways you want them to.  Of course, these tests will work only if you are getting substantial traffic to your site (or else you’ll have to wait a very long time for significant results).

One final point: if you are thinking you don’t want to make sales from your site and so conversion is less important, think again. If you are driving traffic to your site and you have some purpose other than making a sale, you still need to communicate with your visitors and encourage them to do whatever is the purpose of your site. Many third sector sites are ineffective because they have not thought through what they want visitors to their site to do.

Your effectiveness depends a lot upon your site’s content and it is to that we turn next Tuesday.